Gardening for the soul: looking up, and looking down

Being happy boosts the immune system.

Laughing with friends or family or the dog/cat/ wombat/other animal of choice helps make you happy.

Being among trees and flowers and smelling growing grass boosts endorphins, and helps reduce depression.

Sunlight and UV rays help break down our most recent corona virus.

Nutrients are better absorbed when the salivary gland is activated, such as when what you are eating is delicious.

Vitamin D from sunlight boosts the immune system.

Conclusion: We all need to have morning tea, lunch, or afternoon tea in a garden, with laughter and good things to eat. If you don't have family and friends socially isolating with you, set a place for other friends, then place your phone or laptop there, while they sit with you on their screen in their garden. I know it sounds odd, but it works.

Sitting in gardens is good for you. Gardening is good for you. Growing veg saves money and gym fees, plus you get the 'bit of everything' type exercise that is so excellent. A gorgeous garden can add 20 per cent to the value of your house.

And yes, in my most broke years I did grow as much food as I could because otherwise we wouldn't eat.

But that isn't why I garden now.

There are two ways to garden: the 'look down' method, and the 'look up'.

'Looking down' means planting, picking etc. 'Looking up' is being part of the serenity of the garden. I've just come in from spending half an hour looking up at branches and blue sky with drifting clouds, at brilliant pink crepe myrtle flowers and a pittosporum tree covered in purple bougainvillea. As I write this I can 'look up' and see pink roses, white roses and red pineapple sage flowers.

My life, like most writers', is mostly 'socially isolated' - I often spend a week seeing only one or two other people, or with a single trip to town a week.

But I have the infinity of green and growing things, wombats, wallabies, the boom of the powerful owls, the ever changing face of the garden.

I feel isolated in hotel rooms, or where there are only human things around. But isolated in a garden or the bush? Never.

Years ago, a community garden discovered that patients from the nearby mental hospital were coming there, just to sit. After a while, they smiled.

The gardeners began bringing sweet potato and ginger muffins to share, and brewed pots of lemon grass tea and what happened then is a long and lovely story.

Gardens make people happy. Sitting quietly in the serenity of trees slowly shows you that we are infinitesimal specks of growth in the wonder that is this small blue planet of life spinning in the darkness.

A garden rock or rock wall grounds you, and you feel it's strength and stillness.

The song of breeze through laves calms and regulates the heartbeat.

The feel of rough ground on bare feet helps regulate the blood pressure.

Watch dry seeds or a dead-looking stick turn into a small plant, and then a larger one, and finally into a towering tree. The oaks I panted from acorns 40 years ago are now giants, under which my grandsons love to play on sunny days.

And no, these aren't miracles. But what am I saying? Of course they are miracles.

No single one is miracle enough, possible, to cure all that ails you. But it will leave you happy, stronger, and more at peace.

Gardening also creates generosity. Anyone who plants half a dozen zucchini in spring will need to give bags of them away come January. Stunning roses are a call to pick bunches of them to share their beauty.

Garden gifts tend to boomerang. I haven't made marmalade in years. We give away bags of limes and Seville oranges to jam makers, and somehow always get a pot or two in return.

Generosity is contagious. Giving away surplus zucchini may grow into a habit: make two peach cakes instead of one, and give the other to a friend. The question 'who would like it' morphs into 'who might need it'.

Society is built on kindness, whether it be the kind that comes from being willing for our taxes to be used for those who need them most, or seeing a need and quietly fulfilling it ourselves. True riches come from literal social security- knowing you will be helped in need, finding happiness in helping others.

A garden also transforms the most boring house. We sat on a happy verandah last week, four of us several metres apart, not touching our faces or sharing food or drink, but doing lots of talking, laughing, and no sneezing whatsoever. Ten years ago that house was a yellow fake wood square in a bare rectangle of fence and grass. It was possibly the ugliest house I have ever seen. It was also cheap, and the new buyer had little money.

She dug gardens. She planted cuttings. Her dad built a chook pen. Once she had saved a little she repainted the house, then added a verandah, and new solid front steps. There are fruit trees and flowers and a flourishing front hedge and the gentle clucking of the chooks and a pile of bicycles and laughter indoors and out.

It is possibly the most gorgeous house in town. It's also a triumph of someone who wanted to be happy, and for others to be happy too.

It is so easy to have a garden. Mail order plants when you can't get to a garden centre - two-metre trees delivered with crane if you are a millionaire and can afford extremely advanced trees; smaller ones if not; or even packets of seeds.

The first trees and shrubs I grew here came from Jean Hobbins down the road. Jean was in her 70s and never went anywhere - garden tours with Senior Cits or the CWA - without a large handbag, and secateurs.

She took cuttings over fences, gathered seeds and kept them in odd envelopes, and when they grew she'd give them to me and if they weren't planted out and growing well, I might not get a second helping of her passionfruit sponge cake, made with duck eggs, raspberries and strawberries from her garden and cream from Jackie the cow (no, I don't know if that was a compliment either).

There are many books on how to grow a glorious garden just from gathered seeds and cuttings. I've even written one, which should be in libraries, but there are many others, and vast amounts online.

Once you know that it is possible, and feel the urge to do it, you'll find all the resources you need, from old milk cartons to grow your trees in, or jars or cans that can be painted to make elegant pots.

Citrus seeds will give you citrus trees. Apples, pears and plum seeds with give you apple, pear and plum trees as long as the fruit has been chilled for three weeks.

And no, they may not be exactly like their parents, but they will be good. Farmers need uniform trees, so they will all look identical for fussy supermarkets and fruit at the same time.

But who wants that in their backyard? Banksia and other native seed will often give you a lot of trouble to germinate, but once you have looked up, the instructions you will be fine, and your garden glorious.

Gardening is part of my rhythm of life now - I had to force myself not to do it when knee or back weren't capable.

But when I was new to it I lived by simple mantras: plant something every day, water something every day unless it rains, feed or mulch something once a week, and never walk along the path to the house without bending down to pull out a few weeds.

Except, of course, gardening is addictive. Pull out two weeds and you'll be there for half an hour, sweaty and triumphant. Plant one punnet of red mignonette lettuce and you'll want to plant six punnets to have them all winter.

One punnet of primulas will look lonely, so you will find you have planted out an entire bed... and are breathing deeply, and smiling even if your knees ache a bit.

The Japanese have the cherry blossom festival, picnicking under the trees on the day the buds finally open into flowers. There is serenity and laughter and, usually, most excellent food all in one package.

Try the 'catch a leaf' game this autumn - every leaf you catch before it hits the ground as the trees lose their leaves will give you a week of good fortune in the year to come.

Or simply stand there and see if a falling leaf will brush your face, or land on your head, or shoe, all supposed portents of luck, health or riches to come, and as long as you don't feel like an idiot just standing under a tree it is surprising and quiet fun (I am not disclosing how many leaves fell on my head last year. But one did brush my face).

Whenever you feel that life is pressing hard, simply go outside, and look up, at branches, blossom and the sky. No matter how many times you look, it will never be quite the same.

And every time, as you breathe the scents of growing things, it will be beautiful.